Arab Women Lead 'New Generation' In Documentary Film-Making; Tackling Subjects From Femicide To Revolution
New Age Islam News Bureau
07 December 2021
• Saudi Women’s Participation in Economic Sector
Reaches 33.2%
• Malala Calls For Stronger US Support of Afghan Women
• Polygamy Proves an Uneasy Bedfellow for Modern
Indonesia
• Women Activists In Afghanistan Demand Inclusion In
New Taliban Government
• Indecent
Comments on Women: Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina Asks Minister to Quit
• Turkey Marks 87th Anniversary Of Women’s Suffrage
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/arab-women-documentary-femicide/d/125917
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Arab Women Lead 'New Generation' In Documentary
Film-Making; Tackling Subjects from Femicide to Revolution
Iraqi actress and director Zahraa Ghandour
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Farid Farid
December 7, 2021
Alongside celebrities gracing the red carpet at film
festivals in Egypt, the traditional powerhouse of regional cinema, young Arab
women directors are making their mark with documentaries tackling subjects
ranging from femicide to revolution.
Taking a break from networking at the El-Gouna Film
Festival on the Red Sea in October, Iraqi actress and director Zahraa Ghandour,
30, discussed her feature documentary "Women of my Life".
"The main theme is the life and death of young
women and girls in Iraq. It explores how Iraqi society deals with femicide as
if it's normal," she told AFP.
Ghandour said that "in the last few years, a new
generation has come to the fore born in the 90s and 2000s with a new
direction", especially after October 2019 protests calling for the toppling
of the ruling class in Iraq.
"We want to break free from the stereotypes that
world cinema boxes us into," she said.
"It's like there are trends and they
(international backers) want us to fit into these funding guidelines,"
said Ghandour.
"What if I want to make a horror movie? I want to
make what I want as long as it's of high quality."
"Women of My Life", in which she plays one
of the main characters, follows the gruesome death of a young woman suspected
to have been carried out by male relatives.
"As Iraqis in general, our lives are unstable but
the targeted killing of women in particular... cannot be trivialised," she
said.
- Rich tableau -
For Rafia Oraidi, an independent Palestinian producer,
the fractured landscape of life under Israeli occupation provides a rich
tableau for narratives.
Working with Palestinian-American film-maker Hind
Shoufani on "They Planted Strange Trees", the international crew has
been adding final touches in post-production.
"It's a meditative journey set in Galilee that tracks
the daily life of residents of the village where the director hails from,"
said Oraidi.
Oraidi points to independent Palestinian directors
such as Hany Abu-Assad and Elia Suleiman whose films have won Oscar nominations
and prizes at Cannes.
"Without the personal attention of film-makers,
patience and persistence... despite the conditions we're living under, we
wouldn't have a single film on screen," she said.
"We want to show there are lots of other stories
in Palestine besides war, destruction and the occupation," Oraidi said.
She said the biggest challenge for independent Arab
film-makers was a lack of facilities such as custom-made studios.
This "balloons the budget and we're forced to
partner up with other co-producers to get funding", she said.
- Faring better than Hollywood -
Tunisian screenwriter and director Fatma Riahi is in
the early stages of a long feature, "My Father Killed Bourguiba",
that attempts "to tell the history of Tunisia in the last 30 years through
a biographical and personal narrative".
Focused on her father, the documentary follows his
role in a plan to overthrow Habib Bourguiba's regime in a 1987 military coup
and its current reverberations after the 2011 revolution that toppled his
successor Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
"I hope the film... gives an alternative
reading... of Tunisian history... from coups to revolutions to what we're
currently experiencing under (President) Kais Saied," the director in her
mid-thirties said.
Saied himself sacked the government and seized
wide-ranging powers on July 25 citing an "imminent threat" to the
country.
"For women in Arab cinema, the number of
directors for example is always less than men. It's not just a regional
phenomenon but also global," Riahi told AFP.
But Arab cinema appears to be faring better than
Hollywood, where out of the 250 biggest films released last year only 18
percent were directed by women.
A 2019 study by Northwestern University in Doha, for
example, found that around 50 percent of all film-makers in the Arab world were
women.
Source: Yahoo News
https://news.yahoo.com/arab-women-lead-generation-documentary-025309999.html
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Saudi Women’s Participation In Economic Sector Reaches
33.2%
Saudi women’s participation in economic sector reaches
33.2%
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December 06, 2021
RIYADH – Saudi Arabia’s Family Affairs Council (FAC)
stated on Sunday that Saudi women are active participants in all realms of the
Kingdom’s development process. The participation of Saudi women, who constitute
49 percent of the total population, in the economic sector has reached 33.2
percent. The report of the council coincided with the latest statement of the
General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) that revealed that more than 293,000
women have so far entered Saudi Arabia’s employment market.
According to FAC report, the remarkable growth in
women’s effectiveness came in accordance with the Kingdom’s decisions taken to
support Saudi women to empower and confront potential challenges, and that
increased opportunities in front of them to have a vibrant entry and active
participation in almost all major sectors.
The FAC noted that the most important initiatives and
services that have been worked out to guarantee women’s rights include amending
the social security system and regulations; expanding the private sector
options in employing women; supporting women in their work without
discrimination; and operate and develop the Family Violence Reporting Center
and Child Protection. The Family Affairs Council seeks to strengthen the status
and role of the Saudi families, with identifying the developmental needs of the
families in all regions of the Kingdom.
Source: Saudi Gazette
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Malala calls for stronger US support of Afghan women
7 Dec 2021
Human rights advocate Malala Yousafzai, who survived an
attack by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012, argued on Monday for stronger US
support of Afghan girls and women during a visit to Washington.
“Afghanistan right now is the only country where girls
do not have access to secondary education. They are prohibited from learning,”
the 24-year-old, who works with female Afghan activists, noted in remarks
standing alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“This is the message of Afghan girls right now: We
want to see a world where all girls can have access to safe and quality
education,” she added, while presenting a letter addressed to President Joe
Biden from a 15-year-old Afghan girl named Sotodah.
Sotodah wrote in her letter that “the longer schools
and universities remain closed to girls, the more it will shade hope for
[their] future,” according to Yousafzai.
“Girls’ education is a powerful tool for bringing
peace and security,” added Yousafzai, reading the letter, “If girls don’t
learn, Afghanistan will suffer, too.”
Secondary schools in Afghanistan, where the Taliban
regained power this summer, have reopened for boys only, and only men are
permitted to teach.
“We hope that the United States, together with the UN,
will take immediate actions to ensure that girls are allowed to go back to
their schools as soon as possible,” Yousafzai noted before a private meeting
with the secretary.
Blinken, whose country this summer hastily withdrew
its troops from Afghanistan after 20 years of war, saluted Yousafzai as “an
inspiration to girls and women around the world,” and someone who “by her work,
by her efforts, is making a real difference”.
Source: Khaleej Times
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/world/malala-calls-for-stronger-us-support-of-afghan-women
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Polygamy proves an uneasy bedfellow for modern
Indonesia
DECEMBER 7, 2021
AMANDA HODGE
Twenty years after Ustad Hafidin broke the news to his
first wife that he had taken a second, Indonesia’s self-styled polygamy coach
says he is on a mission to bring the practice “back to life”.
The grey and balding 51-year-old – husband to four
wives, ex-husband to two, and father to 25 children – claims to have carved out
a career in the Muslim-majority nation off the back of persistent curiosity
about his personal circumstances.
“People come to me for marriage advice and many would
ask questions about polygamy because they see that I am in a successful
polygamous marriage,” he says at his Banten home on the island of Java.
“I felt rather than starve by giving free advice, I
might as well monetise it.”
Reactions to his two-day “Successful Polygamy
Mindset” seminars ($450) and one-on-one tutorials ($1500), both of which he
advertises through social media, have been mixed at best.
Indonesian society may be growing more religious but
polygamy is still a bridge too far for most who see it as a male indulgence,
and those who promote it face fierce blowback.
The National Commission on Violence Against Women says
polygamy – not illegal in Indonesia but tightly regulated and mostly practised
quietly – is the “doorway” to heightened domestic violence and divorce, and
that promoting it is “equivalent to promoting violence against women and
children”.
Ariati Dina Puspitasari, who chairs the women’s wing
of Muhammadiyah – one of Indonesia’s largest Muslim associations – says
polygamy is “dangerous” and could cause “long-term harm to social, demographic
and economic conditions”.
Indonesia’s Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS)
sparked condemnation in September by calling for polygamy to be part of the
state’s Covid-19 response. Several polygamy dating apps have also been forced
to close.
But few have attracted more controversy recently than
Hafidin, whose decision to take as his fourth wife a 16-year-old student from
his Islamic boarding school drew outrage amid an ongoing battle to stamp out
child marriage.
Now 19, Mita Mufida says she had felt unsure about his
proposal because she had “considered him a father figure” and had hoped to go
to university. But she had been swayed by her parents’ encouragement and
Hafidin’s (unfulfilled) assurances that she could still study.
Hafidin is unrepentant and says it is “entirely the
man’s prerogative to decide who he wants to take as his wife”.
“If all four of his wives are young virgins, that’s
perfectly fine. No religious scholar will disagree with that,” he says.
Many have also taken issue with his recent admission
that he divorced a wife after she reached menopause (though they still share a
foodcart business and she lives in his household).
“He divorced her because she menopaused? Ya Allah (My
God), please spare your followers from men like these who will leave me because
of something out of my control,” film and television actor Prilly Latuconsina
wrote last month.
Such reactions seem only to steel Hafidin’s resolve to
“repair the public’s negative mindset about polygamy” and fix “incorrect”
polygamy practices, such as men who mistreat their wives or marry only to
fulfil sexual desires.
He says most issues in polygamous marriages are just
“management problems and likens having multiple wives to scaling up a business.
“Isn’t it the same? The structure of the business is
already good and profitable, so you wish to expand it,” he says. “You want to
hire more employees, you want to increase production, you want to maximise
profits, you want more customers."
Among those who say they have benefited from Hafidin’s
advice is 32-year-old civil servant “Danu” who secretly took a second wife – a
widowed colleague with a seven-year-old – just three years after marrying his
university sweetheart and having their first child together.
By the time Danu joined his seminar, his first wife had
kicked him out, and his second felt unloved. Now, he says, they’re all
preparing to move into a shared household next year.
“The biggest lesson I learned from there was how to be
a good husband, no matter how many wives you have. And I had been a bad husband
to both wives,” he says.
Hafidin says almost all the men he meets are
“completely ready for polygamy” and it is overwhelmingly women who must be
convinced.
To do so, he says, “I send them on a soul-searching
journey, so they know who they really are. And truly, after the seminar,
whatever the quality of their husband, these women will be happy.
“I myself have four wives, but if you ask them they
will say they feel it’s as if I have only one.”
Amanda Hodge is The Australian’s South East Asia
correspondent, based in Jakarta. Previously based in New Delhi, she has lived
and worked in Asia for more than a decade covering social and political
upheaval fr... Read more
Source: The Australian
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Women Activists in Afghanistan Demand Inclusion In New Taliban Government
Kabul, Dec 6 (UNI)
Women activists
in the Afghanistan capital here held demonstration demanding their inclusion by
the Taliban in the government formation.
While expressing their dissatisfaction with the decree
issued on December 3 by Taliban for Afghan women, the women said their rights
could not be determined in the manner Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada presented.
Women activists called on the international community
to press the Islamic Emirate to uphold the rights of women, TOLOnews reported.
"Many women are the breadwinners of their family.
The government lacks a programme for them. The destiny of the girl students
remains ambiguous," said Sabira Akbari, a women rights activist, on
Sunday.
Farida, a civil rights activist said, "Women’s
inclusion in political, social and economic affairs is their right and it
should be given to them because if this right is taken from the women, the
government is broken."
The activists said the Taliban should have women's
inclusion in government’s formation.
"The denial of the Taliban’s offer to the UN to
secure the seat caused (the Taliban) to throw dust on the eyes of the people,
because we have not had any reaction from the Taliban during the past four
months that we have pleaded, but now they issued this decree," said
Madina, a civil rights defender.
Meanwhile, Huda Khamosh, a poet said, the latest
decree of the Taliban has revealed that "they didn’t consider the main
rights of the women."
Earlier, Akhundzada has said in a statement,
"Woman is not a property, but a noble and free human being; no one can
give her to anyone in exchange for peace deal and or to end animosity."
The Taliban had released a decree on December 3 calling for the enforcement of
women’s rights in Afghanistan.
Source: Uni India
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Indecent
Comments on Women: Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina Asks Minister to Quit
Dec
7, 2021
Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina has asked State Minister for Information and
Broadcasting Murad Hassan to resign from the cabinet for his offensive and
derogatory remarks on women that sparked waves of criticism.
"The
prime minister has asked him to step down from his post within 24 hours,"
Obaidul Quader, roads, transport and bridge minister and also general secretary
of ruling Awami League, told reporters last night.
"The
prime minister gave this directive while I talked with her this evening,"
he said, adding that he has conveyed the message to the state minister at
8:00pm.
The
directives came as outrage continues to pour in over the comments Murad made
during an online interview and also during a phone conversation with two film actors.
Different
woman and rights bodies, political organisations, lawyers and cross section of
people deplored the remarks terming those indecent, vulgar, racist, and
misogynist.
They
demanded his immediate removal from the cabinet and legal action against him.
During
an interview on Facebook page NahidRains Pictures, posted on social media on
Saturday, the state minister made some offensive comments on BNP Chairperson
Khaleda Zia, acting chairman Tarique Rahman and his daughter Zaima Rahman.
He
then got embroiled in another controversy when an audio clip of a phone call
between him and actor Emon and movie actress Mahi leaked and went viral on
social media.
During
the conversation with the actress, Murad was heard passing abusing comments and
pressing to her to come to a city hotel where he was staying.
As
she was refusing, Murad threatened to haul her to the hotel by members of law
enforcement and intelligence agencies. He even
threatened to rape her.
Before
this, the state minister had asked Emon to hold the actress by the neck and
bring her to him.
Mahi,
in a video message from Makkah, where she went to perform Umrah, said she was a
victim of circumstances. "I was very embarrassed that day and also after
the conversation got leaked."
She
further said the state minister has got what he deserved.
Contacted
yesterday, Emon authenticated the audio clip and said the conversation took
place around two years ago. Talking to The Daily Star, he said, "When a
minister calls, it cannot be avoided."
Murad
could not be reached over phone despite repeated attempts. He also did not
respond to text messages.
After
the interview and the phone conversation went viral on social media, many came
down hard on the state minister.
Acclaimed
film director Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, wrote on his Facebook page: "As a
citizen, I am so angry. I want to believe that other members of the cabinet
would be ashamed to sit at the same table with this man. In this short life I
have had the opportunity to see a couple of ministers. I had praised some of
them in my writings. I believe they don't want this man to be their face."
Also
yesterday, the BNP sought explanation from the government regarding its stance
on Murad's comments on Khaleda Zia and her family members.
"….
Murad has claimed whatever he did, he did it on instructions of the prime
minister and she knows everything. This is dangerous," Mirza Fakhrul Islam
Alamgir, secretary general of the party, said while addressing a discussion at
Institution of Engineers, Bangladesh.
Fakhrul
also said Murad was once the publicity affairs secretary of Mymensingh Medical
College unit of Chhatra Dal, the student wing of BNP and later joined AL's
student body Chhatra League.
Naripokkho,
a women rights organisation, in a statement questioned how a lawmaker and state
minister can pass "vulgar and derogatory misogynistic remarks"
against female and asked for the prime minister's intervention.
Ain
O Salish Kendra said such remarks by a person holding responsible government
position is unacceptable, and hoped that the government will take action in
this regard.
Supreme
Court Bar Association (SCBA) Secretary Md Ruhul Quddus demanded Murad
immediately withdraw his remark and offer apology before the nation, otherwise
there would be necessary legal action.
Source:
The Daily Star
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Turkey
marks 87th anniversary of women’s suffrage
December
05 2021
Women
in Turkey, who got the right to vote and be elected in 1934 before many
European countries, celebrated the 87th anniversary of getting full suffrage on
Dec. 5.
Many
municipalities and institutions across the country conducted seminars depicting
women’s role in politics as many national and provincial women’s organizations
posted messages thanking Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Female
local heads across the country gathered in the Ayvalık district of the
northwestern province of Balıkesir as the women societies in the western
province of İzmir conducted a silent “women’s march” demanding equalitarianism
in politics.
Turkish
Businesswomen’s Association also published a message asking more women to join
politics and defend the rights of women.
Every
year, Dec. 5 marks the “Women’s Rights Day” in Turkey since Atatürk addressed
the Turkish women on Dec. 5, 1934, urging them to “use this right competently
and with discretion.”
On
this occasion, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan posted a video message. “Turkish
women got this opportunity much earlier than many women in Europe, and this is
an important indicator that reflects Turkey’s view of women,” he said in the
video message.
Reminding
the representation of women in Turkish parliament has not topped more than 4
percent in six decades after Atatürk’s passing, he stressed, “This calamity
changed after Justice and Development Party [AKP] came to power in 2002.”
“Although
[Turkish] women gained full suffrage in 1934, they started to use their rights
freely under the AKP,” Erdoğan stated.
Source:
Hurriyet Daily News
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-marks-87th-anniversary-of-womens-suffrage-169874
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